Quote from: Flying Hellfish on July 22, 2013, 03:04:33 AM

Quote from: 5atthebeach on July 22, 2013, 01:20:43 AM

GPU miners and last as LTC...could you or someone plz elaborate as to what these are...and how to mine? Sorry, this noob isn't familiar.

GPU miner is typically a build yourself rig Using AMD graphics cards (GPU's) as the source of computing power for mining. Buy the components (mobo, HD, CPU, Ram, graphics cards, PSU, OS etc) mash them all together in a milk crate or open air custom frame/case download a miner program set up a pool account and start mining. Unfortunately it really isn't economically sound right now to purchase and set up GPU rigs for BTC. What a lot of people are doing is shifting their GPU rigs or building new ones to mine alt coins (which are usually similar to BTC in that they are digital currencies but also differ in some ways). Litecoin (LTC) is the second largest coin and the largest alt coin currently (at least according to market cap).

LTC uses a different algorithm than BTC and at present time no known FPGA or ASIC miners exist for LTC (although there are reports FPGA's are being designed for LTC).

I built a GPU rig a few months ago and have been happily mining away LTC. I have traded some of the mined LTC for BTC through an exchange and have kept some LTC as a bit of a bullish bet on the coin itself!

I wish my son was old enough to have helped me build my rig it would have been great father son time! The bonus for your son is if you spend a few extra bucks on some of the components, having a PC with a few GPU's would make a pretty sick gaming rig! You guys can game, learn/teach him how to build a computer from just the components, mine a digital currency and convert to BTC learning some trading practices along the way. You won't make millions but the rig should pay for itself eventually!

My son is looking for a computer right now for gaming...maybe we should consider this when buying a computer...what should I look for in a PC other than what he will be already looking for in a gaming PC?